What is the link between Thornton Reservoir and Leicester? The answer is clean, running water.
Following three major cholera epidemics in 1831, 1832 and 1847 the British Government passed the 1848 Public Health Act.
Among other provisions this made local authorities responsible for the supply of clean drinking water to the local populace.
Leicester, like many other cities in this country had no centralised system of water distribution and the majority of the population relied on the wells, springs and the River Soar for all their water.
In 1847 the Leicester Waterworks Company (LWC) obtained an Act of Parliament which allowed it to build a reservoir at Thornton to supply water to Leicester.
Due to a lack of interest on the part of investors nothing happened until 1850, the year after a cholera epidemic struck Leicester. In that year the LWC reached an agreement with the Leicester Borough Council, of the required sum of £80,000; of which £17,000 was to be provided by the Borough Council and £63,000 by public subscription. In exchange for this financial support the Borough Council guaranteed a dividend of 4% until 1883 and was entitled to all the profits over 4.5% generated by the reservoir ad infinitum.
A local Act was obtained to confirm this agreement in 1851, and work then commenced. The dam built to create it (i.e. Reservoir Road), was an earth-fill embankment with a puddle clay core; it’s about 12 yards high and 500 yards long. The reservoir has a perimeter of approximately 2½ miles.
When finished, the reservoir had a capacity of 330 million gallons of water – it is fed by 2 streams, and this is very noticeable when viewed on a map.
The dam at its maximum height is about 12 metres with a length of 500 metres
When full, the reservoir is 10 metres deep (33ft) and covers an area of 76 acres (30.7 hectares).
In December 1853 the first piped water arrived in Leicester: the reservoir, situated some 200 feet above Leicester did not need any pumping stations, gravity alone moving the water to the city. By 1863 it was realised that Thornton Reservoir alone could not supply Leicester’s needs and so the reservoirs at Cropston and Swithland were subsequently built in 1866 and 1896
respectively.
The reservoir has not been used to supply water to Leicester directly since 1982.
This was for two main reasons:
The cost of treating the water to bring it up to current standards and secondly a serious pollution incident involving a road traffic accident some years ago on the M1 motorway when insecticides found their way into some of the reservoir’s sources.
The reservoir could be used again to supply water thanks to modifications made in 1996, which permit water to flow into Rothley Brook and on into Cropston Reservoir.
Researched & written by Peter Leadbetter
Thornton 